Cryptocurrency losses from hacks top $313 million in August

Last month, the cryptocurrency industry suffered losses of $313 million due to more than ten different hacks.

Of the total funds stolen, 93.5% were lost in two major phishing attacks that took place during this period.

August case

According to a paper published by blockchain security firm PeckShield, the two incidents resulted in a combined loss of approximately $293.4 million.

In the first incident, an unknown whale lost over 4,000 bitcoins (BTC), worth an estimated $238 million at the time, after falling victim to a phishing scam. The funds were reportedly transferred across multiple platforms, including THORChain and Railgun, making their recovery nearly impossible.

In the second attack, another large cryptocurrency holder had approximately $55.4 million worth of Dai (DAI) transferred from his wallet without his permission, with the perpetrator allegedly exchanging the funds for its Ethereum (ETH) counterpart.

Additionally, the Ronin network also suffered a major exploitation. Although $12 million was recovered from the attacker, unauthorized crypto transactions worth $5.1 million were still lost.

Another notable episode involved decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Nexera, which suffered $1.83 million theft due to smart contract manipulation.

A complementary report from bug bounty platform Immunefi shows that since last month, the crypto industry has lost $1.21 billion worth of digital assets due to hacks and withdrawals of funds year-to-date (YTD). Interestingly, this particular analysis characterized crypto losses in August due to such events as being among the lowest in 2024.

The industry lost about $15 million from five separate incidents, more than 94% less than the amount lost in July.

WazirX still in the news

Of course, the main cause of the significant losses in July was the WazirX hack. The Indian cryptocurrency exchange lost $234.9 million from one of its multisig wallets. In response to this massive breach, the company is currently implementing a phased plan to restore its financial operations.

The troubled exchange recently provided an update, announcing that it had filed for a moratorium with the Singapore High Court under the city-state’s Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018.

A moratorium is a legal protection under the law of Singapore, where WazirX is registered, that protects an applicant from creditor actions, such as liquidation proceedings and enforcement of security. During the moratorium, these legal actions are suspended until its end.

WazirX also explained in a blog post that it was planning a planned restructuring in which the impact of the exploit would be distributed pro rata among users classified as unsecured creditors.